News
Local

PORT HURON - Toronto author Peter Watts was found guilty Friday of assaulting, resisting and obstructing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at the Blue Water Bridge.

Jurors returned the verdict about in St. Clair County Circuit Judge James Adair's courtroom. He will be sentenced April 26. Watts, 52, faces up to two or three years in prison.

Senior Assistant Prosecutor Mary Kelly said officials are trying to determine if Watts' 1991 conviction for obstructing a police officer in Guelph, Ont., can be used to make him a habitual offender per Michigan's laws.

Habitual offenders face enhanced sentences in Michigan. If the 1991 conviction doesn't count, Watts faces up to two years in prison. If it does, he faces up to three years, Kelly said.

Watts was crossing the bridge on Dec. 8 when he was stopped for a random inspection after paying his toll on the American side.

He refused to comply with multiple orders during the inspection and had a physical altercation with Officer Andrew Beaudry. Beaudry testified earlier this week that Watts pulled him into a vehicle and tried to choke him.

"My feeling about the case through its entirety (has been) the laws apply to all of us no matter who we are," Kelly said after the verdict.

The trial started Tuesday, and jurors deliberated Thursday before reaching a verdict after about two hours Friday.

Watts' lawyer, Douglas Mullkoff, told jurors during the trial that officers "overreacted" during the incident and that Watts was hit several times, pepper-sprayed and had his shirt ripped "because he didn't move fast enough."

Watts, who drew international attention to the incident after writing about it in his blog, posted something online shortly after hearing from jurors.

Watts wrote that he had no qualms with his lawyer, the prosecutor, the judge or the jury. His problem, he wrote, is with the charge itself.

"What constitutes 'failure to comply with a lawful command' is open to interpretation" in the statute, he wrote. " . The law doesn't proscribe noncompliance 'unless you're dazed and confused from being hit in the face.' It simply proscribes noncompliance, period. And we all agree that in those few seconds between Beaudry's command and the unleashing of his pepper spray, I just stood there asking what the problem was.

Whether that's actual noncompliance or simply slow compliance is, I suspect, what the jury had to decide. That's what they did, and while I think they made the wrong decision I'm obviously not the most impartial attendee at this party."